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In this episode of The Premise, Jennifer and Chad talk with Anastasia Zadeik, author of the novel The Other Side of Nothing, and Bethanne Patrick, memoirist of Life B, to explore their nuanced experiences of dealing with and writing about mental health issues through their respective works. Anastasia discusses how her inspiration was drawn from personal family experiences and the intricate research that shaped her novel, while Bethanne opens up about her journey with double depression and the importance of finding the right diagnosis and treatment.
The episode showcases the honesty and compassion in both authors' narratives, emphasizing the importance of breaking the stigma surrounding mental illness. The conversation touches on the challenges of writing about such sensitive topics, the intersection of personal and fictional storytelling, and the vital need for both education on the topic and for support systems to be put in place.
Whether you are personally affected by mental health issues or are seeking to broaden your perspective, this discussion is a must-listen.
Creators & Guests
Host
Guest
Producer
Chad Thompson
Chad Thompson, co-founder of Monkey C Media, offers professional photography and videography services. He has an eye for detail and a command of lighting that gives him the ability to show his subjects at their very best. You can count on seeing Chad around South Park on his bicycle with a camera slung over his shoulder. If he has never taken a picture of you, chances are good you have never met him.
What is The Premise?
Here on The Premise Jeniffer and Chad Thompson talk to storytellers of all types. From authors to musicians, poets, screenwriters, and comedians we get down to the tiny grain of sand that becomes a pearl—getting to the story behind the storyteller.
>> Jeniffer: Hello and welcome to the premise. I'm Jennifer
Thompson. I'm Chad Thompson. And we are here today
with two amazing women, Anastasia
Zadeik and Bethan Patrick. And today
we're going to be talking about mental health.
This is a very important topic to me.
I have mental health in my family
and I grew up with a bipolar father. He probably
had personality disorders as well. So
today we're really going to dive into what this
looks like for someone who's lived it and writing
about it, writing about characters. And Anastasia,
you've had experiences in your family as well, I think,
who hasn't, right? And yet we act like
we can't talk about it. It's one of those taboo topics. We want
to change that. Bethan Kelly Patrick is the author
of her, her memoir, life overcoming
Double depression. And Anastasia Zadig is the
author of the novel the other side of nothing.
Ladies, thank you for being here today.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Thank you for having us. This is great.
>> Bethannee Patrick: Thank you so much. Delighted.
>> Jeniffer: Beth Ann Patrick maintains a storied place in the
publishing industry as a critic and as the
bookmaven on Twitter, formerly
Twitter, where she created the popular
hash fridayreads and regularly comments
on books and literary ideas to over
200,000 followers. Her work appears
frequently in the Los Angeles Times as well as in the
Washington Post, NPR Books and Literary
hub. She sits on the board of the PEn Faulkner
foundation and has served on the board of the National
Book Critics Circle. She is the host of
missing Pages podcast. Again, Bethanneee, thank you so
much for being here today.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Thanks again, Jennifer. It's really such a
delight. And I cannot wait to, be in
conversation with Anastasia.
>> Jeniffer: I know this is kind of exciting and we'll tell our
listeners a little bit more about how you all know each other.
Anastasia Zaddyk is a writer, editor and
storyteller. After graduating summa cum
laude laude from Smith College with a
degree in psychology, she had an international
career in neuropsychological research while
raising her two children. She now serves as the
director of communications for the San Diego Writers Festival,
as many of you know, and as a
mentor for the literary nonprofit, so say we all.
She is a board member for the International Memoir Writers
association. Her debut novel, Blurred fates,
won both the 2023 Sarton Award and the
2023 NIEA for
contemporary fiction, her second novel. Again, we're going to
be talking about today, the other side of
nothing, was released recently on May
28. So congratulations, Anastasia.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Thank you so much.
>> Jeniffer: And actually, let's just tell our listeners so everyone knows. We record
these in advance. Today is actually your release date.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: It is.
>> Jeniffer: Today's my release day. So when you got out of bed this
morning, there were fireworks.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Oh, yeah, for sure.
>> Jeniffer: The whole room was filled with roses.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: No, my daughter's dog came in and woke me up
and it was like 630.
>> Jeniffer: That's kind of like fireworks.
Anastasia, thank you so much for being here.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Thank you so much for having me.
I am also looking forward to this conversation with Beth Ann.
>> Jeniffer: So how do you all know each other?
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Do you want to take that one Bethanne?
>> Bethanne Patrick: Or should I will take that one? we
actually graduated in the same
class from Smith College. Although I
graduated san laude to
Anastasia summa cum laude.
But she has three very close
friends whom I knew, I knew one of them
extremely well. And they are just,
let's put it this way. Smith women
are awesome. And it's just,
it was so, amazing because
Anastasia's publicist, Caitlin,
Hamilton sumi, is also a Smith
alum and she is
terrific. and when she connected
us, she was so good
about being very
quiet. She knows that, I don't like hard
pitches, hard sells. She knows that
I tend to cover, you know, mostly
things from the bigger
publishing houses. But she
said you, you know, you really need to take a look at this
one. And I want to say, jennifer, to you
right now that I am so glad I did.
Because as I told Anastasia
when I, when I read the
first few pages, I just, I'm talking
like five to seven pages. I was
blown away. I could not believe
that I was reading something so
good. So,
it was just like, and I hate the word masterful. I've been talking
about this over the last couple of weeks, but so
assured, especially because
I have been since my book came out
a year ago and the paperback came out a couple of weeks
ago. I've been in this, world of
mental health narratives, fiction and nonfiction.
And to see something that really interested
me and kept me going and kept me
reading and yet was also so authentic
and compassionate was really something.
So I am thrilled,
Anastasia, for the, launch today. But that's, you
know, that's how we know each other. Isn't that amazing?
>> Jeniffer: It is amazing.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: It is. And it's so we, I actually,
I had not seen Bethany
for a long time until we were actually on a
Smith class of 85.
Zoom about your book life
be. Yes, yes. And I was
like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. And
so I'd heard of you and it was
kind of one of those like, oh, I'm in awe. I don't know if she'll
ever, ever speak to someone like me. But it
was so funny because I think we both kind of had this,
like, misconception, and now we are both
realizing we have so much in common. And whenever we
get on the phone or on a zoom, we
just talk and talk and talk and talk and talk.
>> Jeniffer: That's awesome. And you have so much to talk about.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: We do.
>> Bethanne Patrick: We do. We really do. And what's
really amazing about friends you make
later from your, you know,
college or graduate school
cohorts is that you're
never going to run out of things to talk about there. It's just,
it's such a beautiful thing. So
anyone who believes that, you know,
friendships, you stop making friendships at, you
know, 22, forget about it.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: I think that's right. And I think it's, it's interesting because when I
first spoke with Caitlin, we just
hit it off. And she knew that I had gone to Smith, but I didn't
publish that she had. And so we were talking
a little bit, and she said, you know, what are you, what are some of the things you're worried
about? Publicist for my first book as well. And I
said, I'm just nervous that I put out something that isn't, like,
really good, and I don't want to. And she goes, you're a
perfectionist. And I said, I am. And I said, how did you
know that? She said, because you went to Smith.
And I was like, how did you know I went to Smith? And she said, I
do my research. And then we found that. I think
it's just we had this shared experience,
and, it's not like we, we
weren't there at the same time. We didn't have the same
major, but we just had this shared experience. And
m it gave us commonality right off the bat.
>> Jeniffer: Speaking of shared experiences. So
we're looking at two books here that tackle mental health.
One, of course, is your memoir,
Bethanne, and this one,
your book, the other side of nothing, Anastasia, is a
novel. So I think what I'd like to do is start by you
telling us, a little bit about, you know, what your book is
about and then why you wrote it. And
let's start with Anastasia.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Okay, so the other side of nothing
is a book about a young, the main
character is a young woman by the name of Julia. She has
literally just turned 18 when she
voluntarily checks herself into an
inpatient psychiatric facility because
she recognizes that the grief that
she has been experiencing for many months since
the death of her father has descended into something that is
a place where she can't get out of it
on her own. and
she has attempted suicide, and they've
put her on a medication that actually causes things to get a little
bit worse, which is a common and unfortunate
problem with certain SsRi's, which is
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
can sometimes cause that problem. so
she's feeling very desperate, and she knows she doesn't
want to live like this, but she also knows she doesn't really want to die.
And so she checks herself into this psychiatric facility where
she meets a young man. They fall in love.
He convinces her to leave against medical
advice, and they embark on a cross
country odyssey to try to
recreate an iconic Ansel Adams image
at Yosemite. And when their mothers learn that
they have disappeared, and they also learn that authorities
won't do anything because they're both young adults, which is another
issue in, you know, health, our healthcare
system that I wanted to address. They just. The two
mothers decide that they are going to try to find their
kids and take off after them with just a handful of
clues. So it's kind of a cross country.
Two cross country journeys that are happening in parallel, though not
exactly at the same time, because the kids have a head start.
And the reason I wrote it is because
several years before I started writing
it, my, nephew attempted to take
his own life. And I
learned so much in conversations with my sister
about not only what it's
like to have
that happen in your family, but also what it's like in your
community and how it feels to be the parent of
someone who is
watching their child struggle and not being able to
fix it or help them, and also
to have it be something
mental illness, which is. Still has such, a stigma
that people don't know how to react. So
even friends, even family members, we didn't know what to say
to my sister. And so instead of saying
something or talking about it, people tend to
be quiet. And silence
makes it just that much worse for the people in the situation,
because they already feel alone.
And when we respond with silence, it makes them
feel even more alone. And so I wanted to
address that in the book, and then I also wanted to just
address some of the issues related to self determination
in people who are struggling with mental illness
and how tough that is
to find the right line.
because obviously, we want to give people as
m much decision making as possible. But also
there comes a point where, as a parent or as
a loved one, even sister, brother,
friend. There can come a time
when they've gone over an edge that
they can't be pulled back from. And m the, idea of
letting them make decisions for themselves at that point is really
frightening for loved ones.
>> Jeniffer: Yeah. And, you know,
I had mentioned early on in this interview
that mental m Health runs in my family, mental health
issues. And I have a nephew who has
been diagnosed both bipolar, and he has
borderline personality disorder. And I remember
at one point when I was really struggling
with how to help him, trying to figure out what can I do to help.
I called Anastasia and I said, what do I do? And you
gave me some advice that was so eye
opening for both me and my mom and my family in general.
But I'd like to read a line from the book that I think comes
directly from this. And Julia says to
herself, Julia knew suddenly, ironically, she had to
want to die to get a chance to
live. Talk to us about what
that means.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Well, in addition to my nephew, I should mention that
I myself struggle with depression and anxiety.
And, thankfully, at this point, I can say that I'm managing it,
which, has been my goal, and is my goal for anyone out
there who's currently struggling is to get to the point
where they can say that, that they are managing it.
But there was a time in my life, just a few years
ago, when I no longer wanted to
live. And I think that being able to say that
to someone puts you in a position to get
help. M and it was
the hardest phone call I've ever made was
to basically call 911 on
myself. And I was
scared to do it. But at the same time, it was such a
relief when I was done, because
suddenly this thing that I'd been carrying for years,
decades was out in the open, and
I was able to get help by just
admitting I needed help. And we
as a society, I think, are so used to saying, I'm
okay, I'm fine. That to say anything other
than that feels really, really
still, I guess, taboo or
uncomfortable for others. And so it's
uncomfortable, I think, for ourselves to say
it. so I think that's the line for me, is that
she's basically saying, in order
to get the help I need, I
have to be able to say that I want to die.
>> Jeniffer: There was something I took away from it as well when we were
talking, which was, you know, if he can call
and get himself admitted and get some
help, it puts him in the. In the power seat.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: That's correct.
>> Jeniffer: As opposed to being forced into that situation where you no
longer have choices. And I think that's a big part of feeling
in control of your own healing, of your own
journey to get help.
I think this is. Go ahead.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: I was just going to say when Bethany, Bethanne and I were speaking about this
just yesterday, and I think you would agree, wouldn't you,
Bethan, about when you get to that point. And,
you know, m I
absolutely would agree.
>> Bethanne Patrick: when you hit that point,
it is.
That's, that's the glimmer. That's the
little glimmer of I still want to be
engaged in this world.
>> Jeniffer: Yeah. Wow.
Well, so, Bethanne, tell, us a little
bit about your memoir, why you wrote it,
what you were hoping to accomplish with this book.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Thank you so much, Jennifer, for asking.
I didn't intend to write a
memoir at all. I.
>> Jeniffer: Does anyone ever?
>> Bethanne Patrick: I swear, honestly. You know,
actually, I had,
proposed and sent around,
submitted a memoir probably
at least six or seven years before
this completely different kind of concept.
And it wasn't really about mental illness,
and it didn't go anywhere, which is just as
well. And around the time
that I. This is how it happened.
I was really stuck. I had had
a big project fall through,
and I wasn't sure what to
write, what to work on with my agent. My
agent wanted me to write a book about sort of
being a book nerd, a very bookish person,
and I wasn't feeling it. So we had a
conversation in, I think, 2016,
and the agent said,
well, you know, what
is working for you in writing? And I said,
well, you know, I workshopped
something last year. It's an essay
about my trouble with
depression. And he said, sent
it over. I sent it over. An hour later, he called me back
and said, this is what you need to be working on. And
so we got that to
Elle online, and it came out in
2016, and it went, I guess, viral
ish, you know, I can't, I don't, I don't know what
viral is anymore. But it went, it
was a big enough, number of
clicks that people were interested. And so we
started shopping it around. And, I'm
very happy to say that counterpoint
press, bought it. And so I
sold it on proposal. And that's why I'm taking a
little bit of time to walk you through this process,
because that was
both the best thing and the worst thing
for me. Selling the
book was so
affirming. And I knew that I had something to
say, but I had to teach myself
how to write memoir.
and I really
didn't understand how much I had to learn.
So it took a while. It took me, five
years to finish the manuscript. And believe
me, you know, the day in 2022
when my editor called and
said I had to talk to you today because we are officially
accepting this manuscript. I was
just so happy, so
thrilled knowing that I
really had produced what I wanted to
produce, which was a book that
would talk about all the different
aspects of my
depression and hopefully then
give some resonance to
people who also have depression.
I wanted people to understand. and I'll get
to one of my biggest points in a second
here, that there
is the genetic component,
what is actually in
your DNA. Then
there's the hereditary component, which has to
do with what your
family has gone through, and also,
with how you're raised, how your parents
and grandparents have been parented
to this or that extent. And then, of course,
there's also context. And that has a
great deal to do, with how you
are raised, how you interact with your
various communities, both at home and
at school and in the wider world. So
it's a pretty complicated thing.
And my finding out
that I had double depression was extremely
important. Not because it
cured me, not because, it
makes me special, but it
made it possible for me
to have new treatment and new medication
that finally opened me up
to all of this joy and
fulfillment and contentment that
I'd seen other people having. I'd watched
it for decades, and I
didn't know where it came from. I didn't
know how other people were so
lively and active and engaged in things.
You know, I'd been. It felt like the whole
world was behind a sort of
foggy window for me. And
so, my diagnosis and
subsequent treatment really
gave me back, not just
myself, but other people too.
And so, as I say in the
book, I learned how to be
a woman with mental illness living in the
world. I learned how to
live in the world without always
being so miserable and desperate. And I
don't mean I'm sure other people
either, didn't see that, because a lot
of us are high masking. I'm sure Anastasia
can, talk about that, too, but
because who
wants to live feeling that
way? Who wants to keep going feeling that
way? And so the last thing I'll say,
jennifer, about why I wanted to write my book
is that I've had so many people over
the years, say, variations of
this, which is, you have everything.
You have a great education, you have
a loving spouse, you and your spouse have
wonderful children. You have work that you
love. You know, you don't have anything to be
depressed about. Sorry,
that's not how it works. and I will say
this over and over again for the rest of the time
I have here on earth. Depression
doesn't care whether you're young or old, rich or
poor, fatter, thin, successful
or on the street. Depression
is a, ah, liar. And depression
is really painful. And you can be someone
who has a great amount of privilege
and still have terrible, crushing
depression. And that is not because you're
ungrateful. It is not because you're weak of
character. It is an illness.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Yeah. And, you know, one of the things we were talking
about yesterday was also like, some people
take masks. I mean, I'm a masker for sure. My
daughter's a masker. And I mentioned to,
Bethanne, when my daughter first started taking medication, she said, I didn't know
people could feel like this, which was heartbreaking on
the one hand, and also just, but also great because I was like,
wow, that's, that's amazing. And.
But some famous people
mask to the extent that they don't want people
to feel what they feel. And so they are
determined to be joyful. Like a, Robin Williams, for
example, who clearly was
incredibly depressed and turned it into material.
Now, that doesn't mean that
it's, quote unquote, worth it to be depressed,
but it's just interesting how it
can impact you so much.
And many, many people may not be
aware that you're struggling with it.
>> Jeniffer: Yeah. Sting from the police.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Yeah, yeah.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Yep.
>> Jeniffer: I pulled up a quote from him. Said I was
suicidal, I was manic depressive, and I
just wasn't chemically balanced enough to enjoy my
time on the stage. And
I think that's so common. And it's important that we
have stories like that. It's important that we can read and see. Oh,
I'm not alone. And maybe there's something I can
do to seek help.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Absolutely. And it's funny. Not, funny haha But funny
strange. Just a couple days ago, I got a
review and someone said, it's so brave of her
to be so honest in her author's notes. And I thought,
I want to get to the point where I'm not considered brave
for talking about this. I want to get to the point
where everyone feels like they can talk about it without,
without being judged.
>> Jeniffer: Yeah.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Well, and you know what? I want to add something. I want
to piggyback on that. Anastasia, I've told
audiences before that. You do
not have to be open about
your mental illness, your
challenges. No one
has to be anything.
>> Bethanne Patrick: It's okay if
you do want to keep things quiet.
If you do choose not to
be public the way I have been
public about my challenges,
what's important is
that everyone
respect each other's choices and
also that there be as much support
and information available as possible. So
even if you are playing your cards very
close to the vest, that you can
get the resources you
need to live as well as possible.
Everyone has a different kind of process
and journey. And, you know, recovery, as they
say in twelve step groups, is
not this linear, you know,
trip. I mean, there are so many twists and
turns in whether you're
recovering from some kind of substance,
challenge, or whether you're recovering
from deep brain
based depression. So I
would never say to anyone,
you must share your story with me. But if someone
says, may I share my
story with you? Let me tell you, the
answer for me is going to be yes,
absolutely.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: and I agree. I think that one of the
things, my sister in law had cancer, and one of the things that
she said was so important for her was
having control over how people who knew and
how they found out, because she felt like she had so
little control, from, the cancer and from what was
happening to her and that she, that was something she
needed. And I think that that's right. That's true. For any
illness, mental illness, physical illness, anything that's going on in
your life, you're not obligated to share that. You're getting divorced, you're not
obligated to share anything. But if you
want to share, I mean, you
know, you look back, I don't remember who I was talking to about this,
but someone, we were engaged in conversation about
the big c and the big d and how decades
ago you couldn't talk about cancer or divorce. Right? Like,
people didn't talk about that back then. It's sort of
like that with, hm, mental illness. I think we just have to get to the point where
people, if they wish to, can speak
openly about it and can find. But again,
you're absolutely right, Bethan, that we also have to
get to the point where there's support that's
readily available so that people can educate
themselves, so that they're ready to receive that
information from someone else, so that they know what to say, so
that they don't, that they aren't silent, so that they,
they have resources. And I think that's you know, somebody
asked me, so are you saying you have to, we have to educate everyone in the
public? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah. That's what we gotta do.
>> Jeniffer: Well, mental health is not a character flaw. And I
think that's one of the things that came across so well
in your book. Bethan, thank you.
Is the way you, you talk about how it feels like if you
have lupus or if you have cancer, that's a
disease. And people, when you tell people, hey,
I can't function at 100% today because I have
lupus, they're like, oh, okay, let's do what we can to
help and help you through this. But
when you have mental illness, that's not how it works.
People see it like you're just not being strong enough. You're just being sad.
You just need to buck up. As Laura
says in Anastasia's book. Buck up and get through it. But
that's not really how it works.
>> Bethanne Patrick: No, it isn't.
And actually this is, the perfect thing
to segue from what we were just talking about
because everyone has a different
learning process, everyone has a different
journey. This is why I love
that Anastasia and I are talking together about our
books. Because one is nonfiction
and one is fiction. And so you
get different ways in. Some people
might love both of them. Some people might prefer
one or the other, but it, it
shows that you can
talk about these issues in
a thoughtful, and again, to use a
word, I describe the other side of nothing with
compassionate way. You do not
have to,
demonize or villainize or
ostracize people with mental
health challenges. You can actually see,
wow, they're people. I love
the fact that Julia and Sam
have different things that are going
to occur in their
own journeys in the book. But they're both
fully human, they're both full characters.
They're not,
neither one of them is just a flat sort
of, And I don't think Anastasia
is capable of writing flat character.
But I do think it's so important
that we see, even when someone
is in real crisis, that they are still
fully human.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Absolutely.
>> Jeniffer: Anastasia, you picked up your book. I have a feeling you want to read us something.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: No, I was just, there was when you said that about,
it's not a character flaw. It just reminded me of this
one scene where the two moms are talking and they
have not yet decided to work
together. And
why?
>> Jeniffer: Because they don't want to admit what's happening. It's a personal thing in
their families. Right. And they're afraid to tell the other because it makes them
vulnerable. Right.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: And Laura basically says, so what
you're telling us is your son has stolen from you, taken his
father's car without permission, and convinced my daughter to leave
against medical advice on some ill conceived journey
to recreate an image that's going to change his life. Do I
have it straight? And then the mom says, the other mom,
Arabella says, it certainly does not sound good when you put it that
way. And Laura says, how else can it
be put? And Arabella says.
Arabella found herself questioning whether her underlying
emotions bore any similarity to Laura's. She was
reminded of something she'd heard from one of Sam's many
therapists. She locked her eyes upon Laura's. Surely
you've surmised, given where they met. Sam's
thinking can be faulty at times, but being mentally
unhealthy is not the same as being immoral.
>> Jeniffer: M nice. Yeah,
that's great. Thank you for reading.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Because I think people, you know, when you're, when your decision making
is flawed because your brain is not
operating.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: At the highest level, it could be we
make bad decisions sometimes. And I think that that's,
I mean, we make bad decisions anyway,
but it does, it does change the way that you see the world.
And one of the other things that I think
is notable about depression, and
that, again, is something that my nephew
said to my sister was everything
shaded, every memory he had was shaded by
his depression. At one point he said to my sister,
why did you take us to Disney World when we were little, when we
would never remember it? And she was like, everything,
like, even something super joyful that they did when he
was a kid, he now viewed as something like,
just like you said, Bethanne, it was like this fog
that was over everything. So even good memories aren't
good anymore. so
it's such a serious issue
for us to be talking about. I'm glad we're able to do it so
openly now.
>> Jeniffer: Well, today I'd like to take a
step back because there's two things I'd like to tell our listeners.
These are fantastic books. Anastasia, your book
is so smart. And I want to talk a little bit about
the research. in your book, you
know, the artists, the philosophers,
and you know that you chose
Camus and the myth of
Sisyphus. And I'd like to know
why. Like, first of all, as I was reading it, I kept, like,
writing notes down, like, oh, I need to read that. Oh, I need to check that out.
Like, all these fun things that were just so, so
fun to read and so smart. And
it was like getting into your brain a little bit, which I really
enjoyed because I've known Anastasia for many, many years and consider her
a very close friend. We're both involved in the San Diego
Writers Festival. Well, frankly, we put it on.
And so, like, we've been through a lot together. And as I was reading this
book, I was like, wow, this is like, such a great
journey into your brain.
But I want to know specifically, like, how
you came to choose Camus
and that particular
book. Bring us through
this.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: So there's a. I'm a
pantser. I don't plot my stories out. I
wish I did because it would make my life easier.
>> Jeniffer: Wait, now, hold on. Before you go on, is this something that Marnie
created, the pants or the platter?
>> Anastasia Zadeik: No, it's in the industry.
>> Jeniffer: Ok. Ok. Because I've always given Marnie credit. So, like, I'm a
pantser. Go on, Miss Pantser.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: So for the audience, if you don't know, a plotter is someone
who plots out their book. They use outlines. They have it
all organized. They know where the book is going. They know what the ending is. They
know what their character arcs are. Roughly, a
pantser is someone who sits down and just starts writing with just a
vague idea.
>> Jeniffer: That would be me.
>> Bethanne Patrick: I'm also a pantser.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Are you a pantser?
it's kind of, for me, it's a recognition of that. I don't understand where
creativity comes from. I think it's miraculous.
It's also a little mystified and sometimes a little bit
like, wow. I'll, read something I wrote and be like, where did that come
from?
>> Jeniffer: Who wrote m that? Yeah.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: but so the early stages of the book, I
had Sam basically
giving a monologue. He's a really talkative
young man, and he used the phrase
sisyphean to refer to his own
struggles with mental illness. He
has bipolar disorder, and so he has lots of ups and
downs. And for him, it feels like he's
struggling to get to the top, and as soon as he gets to the top
of the mountain, he slides back down, has to start all
over. And I realized that I didn't know
that much about the story of Sisyphus. I
mean, I knew as much as anyone else about, you know, this guy
pushing a rock up a hill only to have it slide back
down. But I then looked and found
out that there was this book, the myth of Sisyphus,
and it. So I bought it.
And I started to read it on vacation, where I sat by the pool
and envied everyone else who was reading something way
more fun.
And I read it the first time and kind of just
was, oh, my God, I don't understand most of this. I had to look
so many words up, and that
became kind of a part of the novel.
The character Julia, when she starts reading it, she says
she wishes she had a dictionary. So there was things that
happened to me as I was reading the myth of Sisyphus
for the second time, for the third time, I
highlighted it. I wrote little notes in the back, and that
all became part of Sam's process, and Sam did
that. So it's. It was my way of
kind of like, this is what it was like for me. So
that's probably where it gets some of its reality, is that this
is what I went through. I also recognized
that I did have a slight advantage in writing
this, in that it could be wrong. I could be
interpreting the myth of Sisyphus totally wrong.
but that's just the way my characters interpreted it.
So there's really no right and wrong. That's how they saw
it. but so then I started learning about all of the
connections between, for example,
Camus and Escher were
m in contemporaries, and Escher's ascending and
descending, which is a very famous one of his
drawings, is similarly about, like,
you feel like you're going up, but you're really going down. You feel like you're
going down, but you're really going up. Like all of this sort of up and down,
black and white. And
then that all connected with
Ansel Adams being a black and white photographer. The COVID of
the book that I happened to pick, the version of the myth of
Sisyphus that I happened to pick up, had a black and white
cover that was triangles that almost looked like half
dome. There was all of these synchronicities that were
happening in my process.
And I did go down rabbit holes, and
I would come into the kitchen at night, and my husband would be like, you were
researching today. I had the look on your face
because it was so joyful. I loved doing that.
And then I also realized that the myth of Sisyphus is
also applicable because there's lots of myths about
mental illness. There's lots of perceptions that
people have that are just plain wrong. And
one of the. There's a section of the
myth of Sisyphus that Julia reads aloud to
Sam that ends with
Sisyphus being happy. And it
struck me that, you know, this is something
that is part of the book is this idea
that you can, when you're depressed you feel like you
can never be happy but there is a possibility for
you to find that. And so that was
kind of how it all came to be. And it
was a mystery sometimes to me how I would find something and
I'd be like who led me to this? Like some higher
power must have led me to this because
it all just, just seemed to
flow.
>> Jeniffer: Yeah.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Yeah. It was a really cool. I enjoyed writing the
book. I also struggled with writing the book because it
brought up a lot of emotions for me that I was feeling
myself. And when you write about depression and
Bethan, I don't know, maybe you can comment on this too.
When you write about depression, it can be depressing.
>> Jeniffer: Yeah.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Yes. Oh, yeah.
>> Jeniffer: That was gonna be one of my questions.
Bethan is like, what was your experience,
you know, reading this book?
>> Bethanne Patrick: reading Anastasia's book or my experience writing
my book?
>> Jeniffer: Well, speaking to both, yeah. Reading Anastasia's
book, like, did you feel like, oh my God, she got it right or, I mean,
they're very different?
>> Bethanne Patrick: Oh, absolutely. That was a, really
important part of it. And that's why I was
so delighted,
to see how good and strong it
was. Because I
think it could have been a book that there
are some novels and
memoirs where I see
excellent sort of
thought. Right. And really,
good authentic experience. But
the writing is very,
you know, very plain spoken, very dull.
>> Jeniffer: Yeah. But the writing is so good in this
book.
>> Bethanne Patrick: The writing is so good in Anastasia's
book and yet at the same time, every
detail is correct. And
just as I said, those opening pages got
me because I thought I wrote about
being on a locked psych ward. And
there it is. This is it. and of course
it's not congruent. It's not as
if Julia, the character's experience is
exactly the same as mine. It's that, that
it is authentic that I could tell
this was coming from. You know,
and this is the thing. You both know, you run a
writers festival. you never want your
research to feel like,
hello, research alert on the page.
Right.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Exactly. Now I'm going to tell you something that I learned.
>> Bethanne Patrick: That I think. Exactly. Exactly.
And I have one novel. I
have one that's my work in progress.
But I have one before that that I've done quite a bit
of work on. But I knew it was going to have
to rest for a long time because I was
starting to get so excited about
those connections. You were talking about a few minutes ago,
that I was just putting things in
because, oh, my gosh, I can't believe it. This
town had a blank.
This. And it connects to, you know, that
is where you're really, you know how they say, show
your work in math class. You know, you're showing your work instead
of allowing the reader to, you know, have
an experience. And so it was
really, it was,
it was heartbreaking, ah,
to read Julia and Sam's story.
But I am in such a
different place than I was even
when I wrote my memoir,
that I was able to have
a lot of compassion, but not, I wasn't,
you know, identifying too much. I wasn't
projecting myself onto the characters, which is
definitely a good thing. Ah. And I felt
a lot for Arabella and Laura as
the parents of these young people
because I have
two daughters and they're young
adults now. And I know how
hard I have worked
to keep them from
having the same experiences
as I had. You can't keep your
children from experience. But
I wanted to be sure that
they were able to benefit
from everything I had learned and from
the experiences I had had and from the things
that I'd lacked that I knew. you know, whether
it was a resource or, you know,
a way of being treated, I wanted
them to have the full benefit of
that. And so I really think in the other side
of nothing that it's so important
to see
how the families are
supporting each other,
supporting these young people.
And that brings me to something else, since I'm
talking about my own daughters. I think this is an important
part of Anastasia's book is that we
want to be sure that people learn
early about mental
illness and what it is and what it
isn't. It's not just, oh, okay, this is
a good reading experience. This is a good book. I brought it along
on vacation or what have you. It is
a real call to action. And earlier
on, Anastasia said
it's about breaking the stigma that's so important.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: And I think your book does the same. I mean, it's
showing people that you can be,
you don't know what someone else is experiencing.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Thank you. Thank you so much. I pulled
up, actually, my, I'm, going to get
this wrong too, because I never know the
difference. I have a graduate degree in
English, but I still don't know the difference between an
epigraph and an epigram. And I should.
But my quote, at the beginning of
my book is from a peer of
ours, mine and Anastasia's named
Elizabeth Wurzel, who wrote pros
acknation, very powerful memoir that
came out. she, sadly, is no longer with
us. But I want to say
that was, and it's still sad.
She, died of breast cancer, not by
suicide. And that is, I
think, in a way, a
kind of triumph for how hard
she worked on, her
own mental health challenges. But the line
from Prozac nation
is, I was so scared to give
up depression, fearing that somehow the
worst part of me was actually all
of me m. Oh,
>> Jeniffer: Wow. Yeah. Wow.
Wow.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: That's.
>> Jeniffer: Yeah.
>> Bethanne Patrick: That was so important to me. I really
did hold on, I think, to
depression because I
thought that was it. And that is such a great
description of double depression because it is,
you're depressed all the time. You start out
depressed and you get more depressed. So,
you know, I want people to be aware of that,
too. It's not just
bipolar syndrome. It's, you know, type one,
too. There's just. Yeah, so keep asking questions.
Keep, you know, advocating for yourself.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Can I. Can I just pop in a question real quick? Is that
RK Jennifer Bethanne, can you explain
to the audience what, like, to listeners what double
depression is like?
>> Bethanne Patrick: What is it? I will try. I am
not a professional.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: No, no, no. Neither of us are professionals. We're supposed to say that
right off the bat.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Right. so the way it was explained
to me by this psychiatrist was that
someone will have a first degree family
member with bipolar syndrome. Could be one or
two bipolar one or bipolar two.
And they have depression and it
doesn't seem to respond to treatment. What
is happening is that that person is
cycling just like the person
with mania and depression, but
they cycle from depression to
worst depression. so actually,
you, let's say, pretend there is a norm
because we all know normal is
contextual. But if, there is a
line and mania is above the line,
the person with double depression starts out
below the line and then in times of high
stress, will go deeper.
So it's a combination of
chronic depression and
clinical depression or major depressive,
episodes.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: So it's basically like cycling within
depressed.
>> Jeniffer: Within a depressed state of mind but never rising
above.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Yeah. And I knew one of the scenes
I have in the memoir is telling
my then boyfriend, now husband of
decades, one night, you
know, we had been out on a date or whatever, and we
were, you know, in a parking lot somewhere, you
know, draw veil.
But we were talking and I kept
crying and crying and saying to him,
there's something really wrong with me? Are you sure
you want to be with me? Because there's something
wrong. And I know my
editor and my agent hate it when I
talk too much about something being wrong because of
course as Anastasia and I have been saying, jennifer,
it's not wrong. You're not wrong or
bad. I'm just saying those were
the words that I had at the time
and it took so long
for me to confirm that
there wasn't something wrong with me. There was something
that needed to be addressed. With me.
There was something that needed to be.
>> Jeniffer: Something was not right.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Exactly.
>> Jeniffer: yeah.
>> Bethanne Patrick: And so that's another
thank you Anastasia for asking me to define
it. It just goes back to what I said
a couple of minutes ago, which was that you have to be
your own advocate if you know
there's something, you know, not something
wrong, but something that is
keeping you from
having contentment, fulfillment. You
know. happiness is such an odd word.
And the other side of nothing, as
Anastasia talks about so
beautifully in the novel, in her
novel, is that it might be
nothing but it might be everything.
>> Bethanne Patrick: And I actually
have completely changed
my life. By
pursuing a proper diagnosis and
treatment. It is possible you can be
in your fifties and there can still
be hope, there can still be change, there
can still be things that, you know,
make you wake up, you know, with
more energy and all of
this, it's just, I don't want anyone
to give up, you know?
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Yeah, absolutely.
>> Jeniffer: Bethan, you're an incredible writer. I'm sure
you hear that all the time. Yeah. Reading your work was a real.
>> Bethanne Patrick: No.
>> Jeniffer: Well, I'm here to tell you.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Me too.
>> Jeniffer: yeah, just absolutely brilliant. As I was reading your book
I just kept stopping and rereading sentences and just
grateful that I had the pleasure of reading
it. And I hope that our listeners will buy both of these books
because they are both great reads. But Bethanne, the way
that you bring us into your world
works so well. And I don't
think I know anyone who doesn't have some experience
with mental illness, either a family
or a friend or themselves. And
you do it so well. Like, the pacing
is really good because in parts it's
funny, it's irreverent, but
it's so honest and raw.
And so I thank you for writing
it and I know it wasn't easy. And you mentioned earlier, like
of course writing this must have been really hard to go
back into those states of being. Must have
been very difficult for you.
>> Bethanne Patrick: It was. It was very, very
difficult. And one of the things that
I realized as I was working on this
and having trouble and trying to
get it structured properly was
that I had never
had a really solid
family narrative.
>> Bethanne Patrick: That is for a lot of reasons. And,
you know, my parents were doing
absolutely the best they could with what they had
and what they were able to do. But,
but because of the family
history of mental illness and
challenges, there were people
that they didn't want to talk about that
much. There were people who were masking,
there were people that no one, you know,
discussed, et cetera, et cetera. And
so one of the most important things you can
do for your own children in
this life is to give them that strong family
story. There are so many ways to do it.
you know, I mean, we're not doing a
parenting discussion right now, but, you
know, one of the things I'm so grateful, to my
husband for is during the years when
I was really, at the very
lowest point, he made sure
we had family dinner every night, even
if I was there in a bathrobe and just sort of trundled
back to the bedroom afterwards. He
did that for us and that
now we can see
the fruits of this. And I know Anastasia
can also speak to this with her children.
we have such loving,
connected, real relationships
with our children. and there are
no secrets, there are no
pretending kinds of things.
And so, although it was tough to get
the writing done and to go back to some of these
sad points some way in the past, some
much more recent, I wanted
to be sure to change the
script. And so that's why, a couple of the
chapters that are most important to me are the chapters in
which I do show
my conversations with our daughters.
And they were tough. They involved
tears on both sides, but, but
they did change things. And,
it's just the kind of
family life that I
would see. I would watch it. I knew it
existed. I had friends, I had
classmates, and I would see this at their homes.
And again,
my parents weren't trying
to do things poorly. It's just they
didn't have all of the tools and
knowledge that, you know, I have.
And let me tell you, they are the people
that I have to thank for getting to this point,
because they did make sure that I got
to smith was
amazing, amazing thing, and I will be
grateful for that for, you know,
all the time.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: And I think that's another theme that's in both books is this
idea of intergenerational
impact. because I think we are
all the product of our environments as well as our genetics.
And as you mentioned, Bethanne, so many other factors come
into it, but we often, our
gut reaction is to behave the way that we saw
and to change. It is possible to change that. And
I think that's a good message to get out there as well. Like,
you don't have to keep repeating the ways that
things were done in the past. You can change things.
>> Jeniffer: Absolutely. Amen. Indeed.
There's a couple themes in both
books. Maybe not themes, but things that happen
in both books. And one of them is
in Anastasia. In your book,
Julia often does this thing where she
steps outside of herself as if she's looking down
on the scene that is happening. And it's a coping
mechanism. And I don't know if you did this on purpose,
Beth Anne, but there are times in the book when you start to
talk about yourself in the third person. You do it
a couple times, like, I think, two or three times. And it's
incredibly poignant and effective in
making it feel, I'm
guessing, how you felt, which
was you had to step outside of it in
order to look at it again.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Yes, yes.
Absolutely had to do that. It was
very, very tough. And that's
one of the challenges
in writing memoir. And I know you
both are involved in different kinds of
communities. Anastasia, you're on the board of the
International Memoir Writers association, for
example. so you know a lot about this,
but choosing tenses and also
choosing when and if to
break the fourth wall.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Right.
>> Bethanne Patrick: In memoir, this is.
I learned so much about this
in the process of teaching myself how to write
memoirs, I said. And there were a
couple of places, particularly in my chapter
about the years when my husband was
assigned to Berlin and we lived in West Berlin before the
wall came down. I thought,
I can't quite be there. I
can't quite access that. And,
yeah, sometimes it was
much safer to speak about
myself, as you said, in the third person.
but I hope that it, as
you also said, was effective and
not something that put readers off.
So I'm really, really grateful to hear that. Thank
you.
>> Jeniffer: No, it didn't. Not at all. In fact, I think it was
even more powerful because you get
how, difficult that was. And now we're looking at it from
this outside perspective,
and you also speak to the reader many, many times.
Is that even possible? Does it even matter?
You know, these parenthetical.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Oh, I drove my editor crazy.
>> Jeniffer: I fucking loved them, honestly.
Like, occasionally, I swear. Sorry. Our listeners
know this about me, so it's okay. yeah, I just, I
loved it because you brought us in
and it was like you trusted us. And I think that matters
in memoir.
>> Bethanne Patrick: I do too. And you know what?
That is such an important thing to
say because one
thing I know for sure there, I
tried to only tell stories
that were mine to tell. I don't know if I wholly
succeeded in that. But what I know I did succeed
in is
I'm right in there. I am not holding
myself above anything.
I am very much a flawed
character. Terrifically flawed character.
>> Jeniffer: Terrifically flawed. Yes. Thank you.
>> Bethanne Patrick: So that is, one
of the reasons I think when I
do bring the reader in, as you
said, that the reader can trust me
because I am not playing games,
I am not trying to win you
over to my side. I am not trying
to be rhetorical. I
am actually, Asking the
question in a very vulnerable way.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: I think it's also great to acknowledge
the reader is there. Right? Ah, they're there with you.
And I think in a way when you do
break that fourth wall in an intentional
way, it
creates an opportunity for them to step into your
shoes and to understand. It's a conversation. Books like
this are a conversation between the writer and the reader,
in my opinion.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Isn't that true? And you know, one of the things
Anastasia and I spoke about yesterday
is that she originally
intended to write a memoir, but
her writing coach, said, okay, you
know, this is not what you
are meant to be doing. And again, I'm not trying to take over the story,
Anastasia.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: No, no, no.
>> Bethanne Patrick: I am, but I am, I thought that was so
powerful that you listened and said,
okay, I'm going to go into
fiction right now. And here
you are. You know, you've just published your
second novel and it's so
incredibly frickin
fucking good.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: This is making me my, this is making my release days.
>> Jeniffer: I was gonna say this is a good day to make it.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Great day. But you know, it's interesting
because. So my writing coach is Marnie Friedman
and she's also the programming director
for the San Diego Writers Festival. And I met, but I met her as
a writing coach first.
>> Jeniffer: And she's my writing, she was my writing coach
too, by the way.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Oh, wonderful.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Yeah, she's fantastic. And she, she's the one who told
me I was too, I was still in the
memoir, I was still living the story. And as
a result, my emotions were almost too
raw and they were coming across as
angry and, bitter.
And I didn't want that to be
the story that I told. And I think she knew that,
and she said, you just need to give it some space. And
so that's another good thing for
listeners to know. Like sometimes the book that you
are supposed to write is still to
come.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Yes.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: You know?
>> Jeniffer: Well, Marnie told me to do the same thing. Marnie has this
power where she knows you need to write a story, even if you don't
know that yet. And she tells you write it
as if no one is ever going to read it. And
I think she knows that you're going to get all of the bitter
anger out and on paper,
but then you're letting them go, and that makes space to write the
book that you actually need to write.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Yeah. And, you know, one of the, one of the situations that I
was dealing with, I was explaining to Bethanne, is I wanted to
write a book about mothering because I was
stepmothering, my husband's daughter's
ex wife had bipolar disorder and addiction
issues.
And so I was watching someone
with a bipolar mother trying to
navigate the world in a way that was
really difficult because she had no
models for what, what quote unquote
normal looked like. And I don't mean that to say that
bipolar disorder families are not normal. That's not what
I meant. But just sort of like she didn't have a model for day
to day life that wasn't chaotic.
>> Jeniffer: Yeah, right.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: And so I was trying to mother her, then
her mother died. And at the same time, my
mother, I was losing my mother to Alzheimer's.
And so, And trying to mother my own two children through
all of this. And so, so a lot of
that is in the other side of nothing.
But it's fictionalized. It's some of those same
emotions, but they're in Laura or they're
in Arabella, but they're not. You know, I have
that distance to be able to kind of assess it and say,
where does this fit into a story?
>> Jeniffer: M There were so many times in the book
when I saw you and could
hear your voice of stories, but they worked
so seamlessly. Like, no one else is going to know that. Right. But
right down to the, Yorkshire pudding.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Yes.
>> Jeniffer: Julia's favorite meal. Yeah,
actually, Anastasia's children's favorite meal.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Yes. My kids are super traditional. And my
father, for some reason, we're not english at all, but my
father, every Christmas we had roast beef in Yorkshire
pudding. And my kids are like, we have
to have it. One Christmas we were like,
well, we were thinking about having this, and they were
appalled that
we would even consider it. So that did make it in. Yeah.
She was making roast beef in Yorkshire pudding for Sam's
birthday.
>> Jeniffer: Exactly. Yeah. And as she was sticking the
garlic into the fat, I saw your fingers and I thought
to myself, I really want to go to Anastasia's for
Christmas Eve.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Thank you. I think. There we go. I think it's
a date.
>> Jeniffer: There's a point in your book, Anastasia,
where Sam, Sam says something to
Julia. something about how
Julia will likely rise out of this darkness.
Or I guess it's third person omniscience. So
Sam says Julia will likely rise out of this darkness,
but he never will. I know you had a
point in that talk.
Hopefully I have the same point. This could go in a totally different
direction. But my thinking was that not
everyone's going to make it out of it.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: You know, this one of the things that I wanted to
do with the other side of nothing. And I
think, Bethan, you probably wanted to do the same thing
with life. B is I want it to be
realistic. So much of what we hear in the
media, particularly about mental illness, is
either sensationalized so it's over
the top and you end up feeling kind
of that these people are, are
just weird. You know what I mean? Like just.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Off the wall or.
Everything turns out perfectly in the end. Right?
>> Jeniffer: The happy ending. Yeah.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: They fall in love or they get the right job
or their husband comes home with
flowers one day and they have a big talk and
everything's better. And that's not the way
depression and bipolar disorder work.
It's a constant process
for that.
You may have a
clinical depression that started from a situation and
devolves into a clinical
situation. And you may find your way out of that. Like
you may. With the right medication and the
right therapy, you may kind
of find your way to a place where you were before
that situation tipped you. But for a
lot of people, depression is something that is a lifelong
thing. You're going to have it and you're going to have to manage
it and it, and that management, your strategies
may have to change over time.
Julia's situation is clearly situational. That tips
into clinical.
And sometimes though young people,
a lot of, a lot of depression and
bipolar disorder are diagnosed in
young adults, it's a time when a lot of that's the
onset. So. And with
bipolar disorder, it is a lifelong thing
for most, almost every person
that I've ever read. Memoirs of. You
know, Kay Redfield Jamison wrote this beautiful book called
the Non Quiet mind. And she's still involved in
it. And, she had this interesting perspective because
she was a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins and she had
bipolar disorder herself. And so she could write
to both sides of it, as she puts it, as both the
healer and the healed. But she acknowledges
right off the bat this is something that you have to
this year. It's not going to go away. You have to
treat it your whole life. And so I think
Sam recognizes that. And he's
basically saying that to her, that's his opinion of the
situation, is that she will get out of it. But he knows he never
will. He's Sisyphus. He's gonna keep, he knows
he's gonna.
>> Jeniffer: Keep pushing that rock. Boy, that really, that,
worked out so well in this story. I was
like, oh, my gosh. That was brilliant.
And, Beth, I'm bringing it back to you. You know,
when you finally do get your diagnosis, I mean, you make it
very clear to the reader that you weren't healed. It, wasn't
like suddenly, okay, it's better. You knew that
you had to do the work, and it was hard work, and you're
still doing the hard work, right?
>> Bethanne Patrick: Absolutely. Absolutely. The work
does not end, and that
doesn't mean that it is
always traumatic and
effortful. the work
is something, and this
is going to tie into something
anastasia told me yesterday. So bear with me for a
second. The work
is what I do because the
medications keep me stable so
that I can learn
what is
best, what is, you know, making
me most able to keep on
my path in this life. I don't want to sound too
woo woo, but, if I
did not have the gift
of the medication, better
living through chemistry, then I
wouldn't be receptive to
the work. And so one of the things Anastasia
spoke to me about with her
nephew's journey is that
he happens to be against medication,
which is an entirely valid stance.
However, medication did
get him to a point where he
could start doing the work that he continues to
do. And so there are so many
things. There are so many. Depending
on who you are and where you are in your journey, you
might need to look into the past. You might need to
look into your current behavior. You might need
to, discuss
communication, with someone
in your family or with a friend.
There's so many different aspects
of becoming
fully human.
And so I
think that one of the
favorite chapters for many people in the
book is the chapter about my
starting yoga called learning to bend.
>> Jeniffer: I loved that chapter. Yeah.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Ah, thank you. that was a really
important one for me, because originally I thought I was
going to write, what would have been a
magazine article about how
long it took me to be able to do down
dog. I have a shoulder injury. And
so I thought, oh, this would be fun. This would be such a great
yoga journal pitch, that kind of thing.
I'm so glad that I never place
that because that material was meant
to be in life. B that
is part of the ongoing work, you know, for
me, movement, body
work, meditation,
relearning how to communicate,
with friends. And this is something that's really important
to me because, I
thought for so long, in so many different
situations, middle school, high school,
college, graduate school, wherever,
that I was sort of a
misfit, an outsider, that
I didn't have friends. Let
me tell you, when this book came out,
I got so many. I mean, and when
I say so many, I'm not talking hundreds. I'm. My
book is, you know, it's
finding its audience. but I heard from
scores of people who
were in my past and they weren't just reaching out
to say, wow, you wrote a book. I'm so impressed. You know,
can I get your autograph? They were actually
sharing love and support and
compassion for me. I
just, last week got an email from
a neighbor who moved away quite a few
years back, saying, I read your book
and it was truly moving to me
and important and, you know, congratulations
to you, blah, blah, blah. And I thought she
didn't have to do that at all. and the fact
that I.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Misinterpreted.
>> Bethanne Patrick: So many relationships over
the years
is one of the things
that I'll continue working on. Not to
say that means I have to
reactivate all of those relationships.
Or that I, you know, am,
going to write a stunt memoir
about, you know, finding everyone.
What it means is that now, I am able
to say there are people who truly care
about me. How can I
be there for them? How can I also
recognize their real love and affection for
me instead of
seeing it, it through that fog
of depression? Yeah.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Ah, it does. I
think I said earlier about my nephew, like he just, it
colored everything. Everything. Every
experience and relationships, as
you've just pointed out. You know, you misinterpret the way people
are behaving towards you because you're seeing it
through that fog.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: And it's. Yeah, clouding everything.
>> Jeniffer: So another one of the themes that
happens in both of these books is this idea of
identity for you, Bethanne. You
were searching for your purpose, your
identity. And I think, I mean, as all, we
all do this as humans, we want to feel purposeful.
And I think Sam does it in a way where if he just gets the
perfect picture, if he has the perfect person by his
side, everything is going to be okay.
Right? Talk to us. Let's start
with you, Bethan, about this, search
for your identity.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Oh, that is such an important question,
and I am not sure
if it's one that I've fully answered
yet, but it was.
You know, there is a really interesting thing
going around right now that I'm sure all of
you have seen about
birth order and how it affects, you know,
your life. And one of the things that
I literally just saw
online is that eldest
daughter syndrome is something that really
does affect your
happiness quotient, if you will,
because eldest daughters really do
feel so much responsibility
for families of origin, the family that
they are, born into. they often
feel they need to carry the, you know, the
mental load. We used to, you know, that, you
know, women's labor. We used to talk about,
you know, all of the things from holiday
cards to buying gifts to
organizing get togethers and that sort of thing. And
so it's tough to
really have fun when you think
that you're responsible for
everyone else's fun. One
of the things about my identity that I needed
to learn is that
with depression in the background,
it's always there. I'm not pretending, as I said, a
little while ago, that I am cured or that depression
is curable. It is treatable, it is
manageable, and you can get to a very
high functioning level. I don't
know if I'm using the term high functioning correctly,
but what I mean is, is you. You can
become a person who
really just feels very balanced.
However, what I wanted to say
about that is some people
that I spoke to during and
after the writing of the
manuscript would say, but
you're so funny, or, but you were
such a goofball. I remember you as this, and I thought,
thought, that is who I am.
Right? And I don't mean I'm a goofball.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: No, sometimes.
>> Bethanne Patrick: But I am a very
optimistic person. I am a
very happy, and
sometimes more spontaneous than I would
ever believe, you know, that eldest daughter thing,
I mean, I do feel a lot of responsibility,
and I am able
to remember that now. So when you talk about
identity, I had to. I mean, I could go in
another direction. I'm not going to keep going and going, going,
but, you know, yes, partly it's about
saying I'm a writer, I'm an artist, I'm a
creative, and I am going to do this, you know,
this kind of work for my daily, you
know, existence. But it's also about
saying I really am
that funny person. I really
am someone who
can lift people's spirits.
not all the time. That's, you know, but I
am not just my depression.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Yeah, your depression doesn't define you.
>> Jeniffer: Yeah, well, I mean,
how many years have you been married?
>> Bethanne Patrick: Oh my gosh.
>> Jeniffer: 37 now.
>> Bethanne Patrick: No, it's. Now it's 35. This year. It's
39.
>> Jeniffer: Okay. Okay, 30.
>> Bethanne Patrick: I got married.
>> Jeniffer: Congratulations.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Thank you. Right out of college. Next year
is our 40th anniversary, so.
40th anniversary. 40th, reunion.
Yep, I've got it. You know.
Yeah. So a long, long time.
>> Jeniffer: And I was thinking as I was reading the book, you know, I mean, I've
known a lot of people who suffer from bipolar,
borderline, personality disorder, and various personality
disorders. And those people have a hard time functioning. But you
function in a way that allowed you to maintain
your marriage, to go
to college. Not everyone can do
that. So it tells me a lot about you.
I think the person that the world
sees may be different than who you felt
you were inside.
>> Bethanne Patrick: I think so. And I think, let me put it this
way. According to my last
three or four psychiatrists,
and I've had more than some people because my husband
was active duty military for 21
years. So we moved a lot around a lot,
and, but we've been in the same place for quite a while
now. the last few
psychiatrists have said, no, look, you do not
have a personality disorder.
>> Bethanne Patrick: That doesn't mean I never did.
Okay. I might well have
been a, raging
borderline or a narcissist or whatever.
I think this is something that is
very interesting to me. But again,
my current psychiatrist says she's not
surprised. One of the things that
depression actually gave me is
I started the work, the
therapy, the, looking at what was
happening in high school. And so,
so staying with that all
the way through may
have helped me. I kind of did
my own CBT, if you
will, my own cognitive behavioral
therapy. just because I had
depression and I needed to do something about it.
I wasn't doing everything because I didn't know
everything, but I was
able to break through
a lot of that. that's one of the hardest things. As
you know, Jennifer, for people with
BPD, etcetera, is getting
them into treatment.
>> Jeniffer: Yeah.
>> Bethanne Patrick: So, I think that is really
interesting. And now I'm really
grateful that I'm able
to.
If I'm doing something that
is hurtful,
then I'm going to talk to someone about
it. You know, not just hurtful to myself, hurtful to
other people. I'm going to say, you know,
should I have handled this differently? You
know, how can I ask for
forgiveness? and I want to.
>> Jeniffer: Yeah. Well, that's the thing, is, you want
to. And
you, you recognize that in the book that you, you have a lot
of hard work to do, but you were really, you were willing to do
it.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: It's a self awareness thing, right? Like, you
sound incredibly self aware. And
so many people aren't. So many people just go through life behaving
how they behave without thinking about how it impacts others.
And what you just said was, if I
feel like I've hurt someone, I'm gonna go and figure out
why in the book.
>> Jeniffer: There were some aha. Moments for me in reading
life be, and one of them was,
you're having a conversation with your daughter, and she's talking
to you about how hard it was for her. And you realize you have to shut up and
listen and not make excuses and just
listen to what she experienced.
And what I took from your
words was that you were so
deep in your depression and in your own sadness that, that
made you a narcissist. You weren't able
to see outside of you because you were
deep with this heavy blanket that clouded
this fog that kept you, in this state of
sadness. Deep, deep sadness. And I thought, oh, my
God, I know. Narcissists,
several. And I wonder, is that
what it is they're dealing with something so
heavy and so traumatic, whether it's
bipolar or whatever it is, it's making them a
narcissist. And, oh, my God, if they knew.
>> Bethanne Patrick: It's really interesting to me. I
definitely felt at
that moment like, oh, I
have been too self absorbed. And that is something that
depression does. It forces you
to think about yourself all the time.
Oh, my God, how boring. Now that I
don't have to do that, it's such a. Such
a burden lifted. But I also
have learned a lot about narcissism them.
And, I can say that, you know, and
Anastasia has much more psychology,
expertise than I do. But what I will say
is, what you just said, jennifer,
might have some validity because
narcissists are really made so
early in life, m through, you know,
trauma and, you know, really
terrible emotional neglect, not
just childhood emotional neglect, but in
infancy and so on
one hand. Okay, that's
narcissism. It is. But what is
that if not a form of
depression? What is, you know, that kind of
early, early trauma? I just.
It's so awful to think about.
It's so awful to think about. I
said to my psychiatrist, kept saying, you know,
narcissists are this, and you need to stay away from them.
They're very difficult. They're very, you know, they can't
be fixed. I said, but I'm
sorry. I said, maybe I'm like some kind of
wacko empath, but
I feel for a person who
experienced that kind of neglect,
they didn't do it. They didn't do it to
themselves. Someone else, you know, didn't
give them the
early things that all
human beings, all human babies
need. I don't know.
>> Jeniffer: But I will say that not all narcissists come from a
background that was abusive. So it's like.
But again, we have to say what none of us are, the
clinical hair, but I just.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: A little bit of humor about the narcissist thing.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: in addition to depression, I had severe social
anxiety. And I was always worried about
every little thing. What I wore, what I said,
Did we get too early? Did I leave too
late? Did I not say the proper goodbye? Did I.
It was just insufferable.
My husband put up with this for
years. I would wake up at two in the morning
and just be obsessed with some
minor thing or, you know, did
I wear the wrong shoes? I mean, just insane
stuff. And I use that phrase
knowing that.
>> Jeniffer: It'S probably insane phrase.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Yeah. but one night
he said to me, honey,
you're just not that important.
And he followed up by saying, no one
else is awake right now thinking about your
shoes. and he was so right. But I think
that depression and anxiety can bring
you. Anxiety can make you so focused on
every little wrong thing you might have done
that it does crowd out a lot of
the experience. Right. You're in this situation and
you're so worried about what you just said or what
you're wearing that you missed
the joy of the event that you're attending and
the conversations that people are having around you, because all
you can think is, oh, that person just looked over at
me. Were they looking at me funny? Is it because I'm wearing the wrong
dress? Like you? I could go into this, like,
incredible circle, of
just self deprecation and
loathing, where I was so convinced that I had
done absolutely everything wrong, and it was such
a refreshing thing. And now when I think about it, it makes me
laugh. And whenever I start to go just a little bit into
that, I just think to myself, you're not that important.
>> Jeniffer: Well, I think that
we should end because we're coming toward the end of
our hour, which I think we could talk about this for
many, many hours, and it's such an important
topic. but thank you both for writing your
books. The other side of nothing is available
everywhere. Books are sold as of today. Of course, we'll
drop this episode on a different day than today, but still. Dear
listener, please buy this book. It's so good. And I
wanted to point out that Anastasia has in the
back of her book, just,
crisis helplines resources. It's
so important if you or someone you know is suffering from
mental illness or personality disorders. and I
love, bethan, how you separated the two.
They are very different, although often people can have
both. so thank you for doing that.
But if anyone who does know of someone, please
get help.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Yeah. And I just. I only recently learned
after I wrote the book that a lot of the
resources for those who are struggling with mental
illness are also resources for their family,
friends, community members. And there
are programs now available through organizations
like Nami and, and, the
AFSP 988.
A lot of these have
actual training programs. You can bring them into your
community, and you can bring. They're going into
schools. They're going to high schools. So
there is a shift, and I hope that we
continue to move that way. But
definitely, if you see someone
struggling, you can be that
person. You can be that lifeline, and you
can reach out and say, I know someone
that is. That is in this position. What can
I do? How can I help them? And they will help you
help them.
>> Jeniffer: Nice.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: So that's, I think, a good thing to say
before.
>> Jeniffer: but then did you want to add anything to that before?
>> Bethanne Patrick: I just. Yeah, I'll just quickly
say that
I agree we need more
education. Never too much.
And again, I want to say to people,
if you aren't ready to
share everything, that's fine.
But I hope that you can
listen either by reading
Anastasia's novel or my memoir,
or both. That's right. Or many, many
others. And just, you know, the m
more that we can all
share these experiences, and the more
we can all open up,
the more I hope even
those who are feeling very
reserved about what is happening to them
or to their loved ones will reach
out to the professionals that we are
not will, you know, keep trying.
And I know that isn't easy. I am not. I
am really fortunate to
have excellent health insurance
and access in the DC metro
area to terrific
caregivers and different kinds of providers.
I know that isn't the case for everyone
out there, that many people live in places
where there might be only one
therapist in town and you have to drive a couple of hours
to see a really good psychiatrist.
But if
you can do it, please
do it. Please. because
there are so many different ways
to be in danger from mental
illness and I want
everyone to be safe. I want
everyone to feel that they
matter. You matter. You do.
>> Jeniffer: Amen to that. Yeah,
absolutely. Well, thank you
both so much for joining us. We really
appreciate your time, your books, and I
hope everyone does go out and buy both of these books. They are
both excellent reads in addition to good
stories and opening our mind to
the realities of mental illness. It
is an illness and unless we
know more about it, we're never going to be able to
help each other people.
>> Jeniffer: You can learn more about Bethanne on her website,
bethanpatrick.com, follow her
on thebookmaven on
Twitter or x whichever you prefer, and listen
to her missing pages podcast.
You can learn more about anastasia on Instagram
at anastasiazaddyk and of course on her
website, anastasiaZadeike.com dot.
Again, thank you so much ladies for being here.
>> Anastasia Zadeik: Thank you for having us.
>> Bethanne Patrick: Thank you. Really an incredible experience.
>> Jeniffer: This has been a great conversation and
folks, I hope you will buy your book their books.
This has been another episode of the premise.
You can visit us online at ah,
thepremisepod.com and subscribe
and rate or review the premise wherever you get your
podcast. Those reviews really help us get the word out
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You can follow me, your host on Instagram, Enfer
Grace, or follow me on Facebook at jennifer
thompsonconsulting until next week, thanks for
listening.